Beggars All: Reformation And Apologetics

-Tedium-
I wasn't planning on mentioning this, but as I was putting together the above "epistle of straw" post, I remembered my criticism of a Romanist apologist usage of this particular Luther quote. He stated,

"Of special noteworthiness and relevance is Luther's Preface to the New Testament (1522; revised 1545), where he says many astonishing, outrageously presumptuous and foolish things (including the famous "epistle of straw" remark)." [Luther vs. the Canon of the Bible ]

In my article, Luther’s View of the Canon of Scripture, I criticized this comment:

In his paper Luther vs. the Canon of the Bible, the Romanist says, “Of special noteworthiness and relevance is Luther's Preface to the New Testament (1522; revised 1545), where he says many astonishing, outrageously presumptuous and foolish things (including the famous "epistle of straw" remark).” He notes the preface was revised, yet leaves out the fact that the comment “epistle of straw” was dropped from the text. Perhaps he isn’t aware of the actual revisions since the current publishing of Luther's Preface to the New Testament combines the 1522 prefaces with its revisions, usually with brackets to delineate which sentences were left out. Perhaps the version he utilizes does not include the brackets and explanatory notes. He isn’t guilty alone: many Protestant authors do Luther the same discourtesy.

He then revised his article:

[correction: (added on 9-26-04) it was helpfully pointed out by Reformed Luther researcher James Swan that these words appeared only in the original 1522 preface, not the 1545 version. Luther seems to have retracted this particular remark. I inadvertantly [sic] overlooked a footnote which explained that bracketed sections were later removed.